Apostle Tommy Quick: Rebuilding the American Family

SPEAKER 01 : 0:03

Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:16

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I am so thrilled you’re tuning in today. I want to tell you about an amazing private classical school that’s opening this fall in the Centennial, Colorado area. It’s called Excalibur Classical Academy. Their mission and vision is restoring America’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. So if you have a young child that’s starting kindergarten through third grade this fall, they are giving tours and information sessions for parents. please reach out to them to book a time at ExcaliburClassicalAcademy.org. You know, something that’s really important these days is having strong families and having strong faith. And I’m so excited that we have a coalition of pastors around America. who know the importance of a biblical worldview and raising up the next generation of strong families. And so I’m not going to delay to bring one of the very people that I respect so much, Apostle Tommy Quick. Welcome to the show today.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:35

It is indeed my pleasure to be here with you. I’m just enamored by the work that you’re doing and the things that you’ve tackled. There’s very few people that have the courage, once they see issues, to actually tackle them, sometimes because they just feel like they’re too big, they can’t make a difference. But God is raising up people like yourself. And of course, I think I’m one of those two that are determined that we’re going to give all of our energy and efforts to saving our people and our nation. doing it the right way with the principles of God and with the doctrine of God.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:07

Well, Apostle, I’m so inspired by you. And before we get into our conversation, I’m going to share a little bit of your bio with my listeners. Apostle Tommy Quick is a nationally recognized ministry leader, author, and speaker with nearly five decades of experience in Christian leadership. He is the founder and president of Christian Families Against Destructive Decisions and serves as senior pastor of the Promised Land Church in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Known as the Apostle to the Family, his work focuses on restoring strong families through biblical principles, strengthening fatherhood, and equipping churches to build generational legacy. Through his teaching, writing, and community outreach, Apostle Quick emphasizes that rebuilding the family is key to restoring society. He was awarded the Douglas Leadership Institute’s Leadership Award in 2025. But his most important job is husband of 40 years to First Lady Valerie, dad to five, granddad to 14, and great granddad to four. Okay, so a pause so quick. One of my favorite questions to ask grandpas is what’s your grandpa name?

SPEAKER 02 : 3:25

Oh, granddad.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:26

Granddad.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:27

Granddad, yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:28

You know, that’s what I call my, I called my grandfather granddaddy. So he was granddad. And he was from South Carolina too. So King’s Tree. I don’t know if you know where King’s Tree is.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:37

I do.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:39

That’s where my people are from. So I love that. So that’s really that’s really awesome. So you say that the family is the first institution. How does that belief shape your view of education in America today?

SPEAKER 02 : 3:55

Well, I think that realizing that when God seeded society, he started in a relationship between a man and a woman. If you look at the human body, you say the cell is the smallest segment of the body. When we looked at society, if we traced it back, it would be a woman and a man in relationship together. And everything in society has come from that, whether it be good or whether it be bad. And so when we look at education as an institution of society today, we realize it has to be traced back to the relationship found within marriage and a family to be effective, because that’s where it all begins at. And as we follow through the scriptures, we realize that God has made the family the principal educator, both in natural and spiritual things.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:44

Well, let’s talk about that. That’s the first chapter in my book, Restoring Education in America. I talk about fathers and the importance of fatherhood because we know in our community, especially in the black community, how that is something we really need to tackle because we’ve seen a decline of the family. And we know that God has ordained the husband to be the head of the home. There’s order in that. I was one of the blessed and most privileged young girls who had a black father who was there at the time of my birth. there when I graduated from high school, college, walked me down the aisle, and he was married to my mother until the day he died a year ago. And so I grew up, I know what it’s like to have a strong, godly, patriotic father in the home. But how do we message this to this new generation? Because there’s this disconnect in our community where People socially identify with one political party and our show is not necessarily about politics necessarily, but we know like there’s one party that supports different things that we believe in. So how do we reach this next generation of young people to start voting and practicing these things that are a biblical worldview?

SPEAKER 02 : 6:02

Well, I’m sure there are probably people with various ideas about how this can be done. I personally have established something I call CDOS. It’s the Creator’s Design Operating System. And so everything needs to be aligned with what God originally intended in order for it to be blessed. And so what we see today is so many people just being subjective about what they think is right and what practices, how men should function, how women should function. It’s a matter of their feelings or maybe what they’ve observed. And what we realize that blessings are structural. In other words, if it’s not structured properly, then the Lord’s blessing will not be upon it. And therefore, it’s not about what I feel at the moment of what I think logically or what seems to be working in the time. If I really want to be blessed, I’ve got to find God’s design for my life. when it comes down to marriage or when it comes down to policy and i’ve got to adjust myself to make sure that i am lined up with god because he is going to bless what he designed and if he designed marriage between a man and a woman for life then he will bless that and you’re an example of that and you’re what we want so much for all of our people and we want for young people uh to realize that that is the way that god designed it to be in any other way The scripture tells us that there are consequences and we can go through the scriptures in Malachi 4 and 6 where it talks about if you don’t align the father with the children and children with the father, God will visit with a curse. And throughout the scriptures, it let us know that any deviation from original design. we end up in less than God’s optimal will for their lives. And I think that that’s the message that our young people have got to see and that the experiments of our age are falling like dominoes before us right now. The gender issues, the LGBTQ, those things are falling over. I declared that it was experiments that would fail a few years ago. I had no idea that they would become secondary to our public conversation in such a short period of time. because of the fact that God does not uphold them.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:15

Well, Apostle Quick, you’re a pastor of a church. And if anybody opens up social media, they’ll see some pastors who are saying some things that are not in alignment with God’s word. And they’re leading people astray from what God’s word actually says. You’re aligned with Douglas Leadership Institute. And that’s where I first met you. And I was amazed. I walked into this room. of all of these faith-based people and hearing from all of these black leaders who were just pouring out truth about where we need to go. And that takes courage in itself to be on this mission. You’ve received a leadership award through DLI. Talk about the work that DLI is doing and you as a pastor, why is it so important that other pastors, A, not be afraid to speak truth from the pulpit and not believe like this lie that, oh, because it’s church, you can’t talk about social issues, but why it’s so important that you do address some of the issues you were just talking about?

SPEAKER 02 : 9:24

Well, I think 1st of all, be quite honest, I think it begins with a conviction a conviction 1st of all of our call and who we serve. And who we serve, and if we want to see if we want to be successful in pastoral ministry. I think that’s a different thing for being successful in church. I think that there are many people who desire to have successful churches, which means that they have numbers that they can count and they have dollars they can count. And maybe they enjoy a certain amount of notoriety. But if we want to be successful as pastors and in ministry, we receive the ministry. We don’t create it. And the ministry that we receive comes from God. He gives us what to say. He tells us what’s truth. He tells us what the consequences of failing to do the truth and the rewards of doing it. And we must submit ourselves to the God of the Bible to believe that he knows better than our degree from the seminary. or any of our mentors that we may have served under and just know that God’s word is truth. And if we’re going to see the recovery of our people and as our nation as a whole, we’ve got to preach the truth. And of course, we know that the flesh is not subject to God, neither indeed can be. And so therefore, it becomes a very challenging thing because some people will reject it. But you know, I always say when a man goes fishing, he counts the fish he catches and not the fish that were in the water or that got away.

SPEAKER 03 : 10:58

Wow. Okay. So when you’re talking with young people about fatherhood, because we got to get them when they’re young, right? We’ve got to be an example and in leadership. And I saw your picture on your website of your family, right? And I was so amazed. And I was like, look at this beautiful family and the legacy. And it made me think about, okay, so my mom and dad were married till the time of their death. My dad’s death, my mom’s still alive. And then I look at my grandparents on both sides, married till the time of their death. And that, that legacy of marriage and that bond, what a blessing to be able to say that. And I, and not like, there’s no judgment, right? Because people go through their, their stuff and second marriages and all that. But that’s something that we strive for. And we’ve got to get this young generation because they’re seeing so many things on social media. They’re hearing all of the political things that are going on and making judgments and sometimes not always having all of the truth. So do you have ideas on how to message to this next generation? And I will add, when I went to DLI, I saw this whole row of young people

SPEAKER 02 : 12:09

who were there being fed the word and finding their community but what’s your message to this next generation well i think that my message would come from scripture i think first of all a man is not without the woman the bible says that when a man finds a wife he finds a good thing and obtains favor from the lord i think those are two different things one she’s a good thing because she settles him she brings complimentary blessings into his life. But then God himself smiles on it and says he also obtains favor from the Lord, which means that God then begins to bless in ways that no one would ever discover when they’re shacking or whenever they’re just having multiple relationships. Secondly, I like to say that every decision that we make is not divorced from the future. The Bible says in Exodus 20, 25, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation. So I like to say to young people, the seed that you’re sowing today is for 2056, which is still 30 years away. But your children and your grandchildren will be affected by the choices that you make. And so therefore, we have to live seriously These are times, these are serious times. We must live serious lives. And so we go back again to the design. What did God intend? And what I like to talk to them about, we have a program called Rise Up. It’s for children, young people between the ages of 13 and 18. And it’s a radical mindset that we want them to achieve because many times they will not recover unless they reject what they’ve learned in their own household. It does not mean rejecting their parents, but maybe rejecting the values and the functions and the roles and the role confusion that the parents have. And so we teach them the family’s dysfunction does not have to be yours. That maybe God has given you that last name for you to redeem it. Maybe you don’t know your dad. Maybe it’s in the street, but God will allow you to redeem that last name. Don’t cast it away. But rather, amen, you flip the switch and be the one and say the curse ran into my family until the curse ran into me. And you become the one that’s going to bring about a stronger foundation for the generations to come. So we minister hope. We let them know, praise God, that God says that the pain of your parents does not have to be your pain. you see and we let them know that you can through christ and i use myself as an example as one whose life has been rebuilt and we’ve got a number of people around us who’ve experienced rebuilt the rebuild and they’re not shy about telling their experience and how god has brought them out and what we find is that we have young men and women who never intended to go to church, never intended to get married. They’re embracing Christ, embracing marriage, and they’re having children and buying homes. And so we just want to see this scale to another level. But it basically begins with what you’re experiencing is not normal. It may be the new normal, but it was never what God intended. And God desires to redeem your life. And you know what? Everything that God is going to do for you in this life, he’s going to do it for you in this life.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:25

if you’re just tuning in my special guest today is apostle tommy quick if you’ve got ears to hear you need to hear what he is bringing today it’s like sad man god’s word is just amazing so apostle it is america’s 250th birthday and when i think about someone like frederick douglas and his story, and we all know his famous speech, What to the Slave is the 4th of July. 4th of July is coming up. We’re going to celebrate all across America. What do you think he would say if he gave a speech this July?

SPEAKER 02 : 16:01

Well, I think he’d probably echo some of the things that I’m saying. I think he would say that if we want to turn things around, we’ve got to turn it around in our individual homes. I think that most of the ills personally that our society is facing today is due to the breakdown of the family. I think that God restores in the same order that he created. And so with all of this distortion that we have in society today, if we’re going to fix it, we’ve got to go back and build strong, responsible fathers and mothers and strong homes. And we’ve got to take back our power and authority as parents. And we got to set the example. We got to be controlled the education of our children, the exposure, the things they’re exposed to, and realize that if we do that with God’s help, we will not only save our own families, but we will affect the communities in which we live. I think that it would be a message about restoring family. more than anything else, more than conservatism. I think we have to be very careful that we don’t allow conservatism or liberalism become idols to us as though they themselves can redeem us from the condition. It’s a changed heart. And I always say policy comes to the door and it can’t go any further. But the gospel enters the house and changes the heart. which changes the man and reorders and restructures the home to function the way god wants i think that that would be something maybe not in those words but i think that’s something that frederick dillis today would say this is where we need to be putting our attention that is beautiful that’s really profound because i agree the more birthdays that i have the more i realize that a lot of the things that stress me out about politics and what’s going on socially

SPEAKER 03 : 17:46

really don’t matter i mean i’ve had so many people pass within the last couple of years and i think man what is what is the meaning of life right we know it’s about giving our life to christ and being fishers of men and so it really has helped me to refocus on that when i start to get worked up about things that i see and injustices that priscilla really don’t get distracted by all of this stuff focus on what God has called us to do and to be. And that’s why it’s so important. I love when I, when I see other pastors, you know, preaching the word of God. And like you said, not worrying about all of the other things because we’re living in this culture of like clicks and popularity. Right. And, and, podcast. So that is such a great reminder of what needs to happen. So you have this organization, Christian Families Against Destructive Decisions. Can you talk a little bit more about this organization, what your mission and vision is?

SPEAKER 02 : 18:47

Yes, I’d love to. CFAM was born officially in 2020. i think i started moving toward seeing the importance of family ministry doing our bbod black boys distinction mentoring program that we started in 2008 and we realized many of the boys we were reaching were fatherless and we began to see that the problems were deeper than just the boys behavior it had to do with the home and as much as we were able to affect the boys many times it would reverse when they got back to the environment where they came from I came to the conclusion that I needed a whole family ministry, something that was going to not only affect the children, but also would strengthen the parents and strengthen their relationship to secure the children in the home. So after going through a very difficult personal problem myself, while I was sitting there contemplating what to do, the Lord dropped CFAD into my heart. And he showed me, matter of fact, what he used at the time was what happened when Lot was called out of Sodom to go to the mountains, and Lot hesitated, and they had to drag him out. And then his wife, who was told not to look back, praise God, looked back, turned to salt, and he was only able to save seven after he lost her. And then he refused to go to the mountain, which was the eagle’s nest, the way that God showed it to me. and because he did he went to a small city and there he didn’t survive very well he finally went to the mountain but by that time his daughters had become very moral and something happened that has affected his lineage forever and the lord said that he’s calling us to come out of sodom and i think that’s the american culture today and we can’t hesitate we’ve got to go to the mountain and that mountain is christ we’ve got to return to biblical foundations And so from that, the Lord gave us the name Christian Families Against Destructive Decisions. And I started in the local community. I actually started within my church. I gave them the vision and the Lord said, what you need to do this is in the house. And lo and behold, some pastors that I knew heard about it and they began to adopt it. They wanted to be a part of it. And so it ended up in 11 states so far. And the Douglas Leadership Institute was started by a dear friend of mine that whenever God gave me the vision, I didn’t even know him. And the Lord told me to call him. I had to go to Facebook and look him up. And I asked him to give me a call through Messenger. He called me immediately. And I told him, God has given me an assignment. I have a challenge. And he told me to call you. and he said he asked me what i was talking about i told him he said oh quick i know you i was just talking about you the other day with bishop patrick wooden and so from there three weeks later i’m sitting at at the heritage and then from there the frc and then later i was introduced well of course he was a founder of douglas leadership institute so when he passed i tried to build a relationship continued relationship with the present uh president but as a result of that we have come to the point now where we’ve had five conferences we start our conference the same year that douglas leadership institute did and we began to support one another and they always attend hours i always attend theirs as a result we have just touched people and met people like yourself from across the country that our ministry resonates The difference between the two of us is I’m acting as an apostle and a pastor. I am directing my energies into restoring family. I don’t put as much time in policy and politics because I think that it’s become a Trojan horse in many ways. And so, but I understand. And so therefore I don’t have the support that maybe some of the other organizations get, but I feel like on the ground, where we reach people where they are, we make them a part of who we are, and we train them to be successful in their homes, I think that that is exactly the formula that we need in this hour. And so that’s what we do at CFAD. We have now about 12 courses that we have written that address fatherhood and masculinity. Motherhood family governance, the even reset, which we’re doing right now is a 90 day reset. That’s just yielding tremendous fruit in the lives of couples that were having. Marital issues, but without addressing the problem. addressing the design is bringing solutions to their homes and families. We’re collecting the statistics and the testimonies because we want to scale this nationally because it is better than any marital counseling I’ve ever been able to do. And so we are just pioneering and God has given us ideas of how we can war a good warfare against a culture that has been destroying our family and our communities. And I do believe that uh cfad was called for this time it’s based on this scripture isaiah 58 restoring the foundations of the generations and the past for dwell to men to dwell in genesis 18 where god told abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed he also reiterated that to jacob and then in malachi the fathers turned their hearts to the children and the children to the fathers, he was soon accursed, which means politics won’t answer or education won’t answer. It’s going to have to be the restitution of God’s original design in the home in order to avert the things that we see coming on. So I believe that we’re right on it.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:23

You’re on fire today, Apostle Quick, Restoring the Family. What is your website in case someone wants to support you? Can they make a donation through the website as well?

SPEAKER 02 : 24:33

Yes, it’s www.cfadd.org. And we would certainly appreciate all the support. We recently acquired 127 acres, two wonderful lakes, training center at home that we want to become a place of pilgrimage for pastors who want to be trained in family ministry, and for families who want to come and be healed. It’s a beautiful place.

SPEAKER 03 : 24:57

What’s the closest airport to you?

SPEAKER 02 : 25:00

Greenville, South Carolina.

SPEAKER 03 : 25:02

Oh, my goodness.

SPEAKER 02 : 25:04

Greenville, South Carolina. And we will send someone to pick you up, and it won’t be a cab. It will be a limousine, all right?

SPEAKER 03 : 25:11

All right. Only the greatest and the best, most excellent service. Oh, that is beautiful. Oh, we need to make sure. I’ll make sure we put your website on everything when we tag you on the encore here. So where can people follow you? Are you on social media? Can people follow you too?

SPEAKER 02 : 25:29

Yes, we’re on. You can find us on TikTok at the chosen one. And that’s not me. That’s the young man who put me on TikTok. And so he just he just puts my stuff out there. And then you can find us on YouTube at Apostle Tommy E. Quick. And also there’s a CFAD channel as well on YouTube. Also, we have our own community at community.cfad.org. It’s our own social media site. So a person can actually come there, set up a profile, and they can interact with people from across the country who’ve embraced family and all of the conversations around how to strengthen families, a lot of moms when they’re talking about parenting uh sharing stories about their children even their recipes and things that nature uh we’ve got men that come together in the black man resurgence center talking about cultural issues that we face there and so and there are classes that can be taken there free of charge how to build a strong family 21st century just comes to mind they can do that we also have a daily a daily devotional just a little nudge every day to keep you focused on your family and uh how god desires to bless and will bless you and how to make it through the difficult times that they can also subscribe to that there on the website they can also and you might like this they can actually uh see what how do they uh see themselves what how do they derive their identity is it are the democrats first are they Black first? Are they Christians first? They can actually do a little survey that will tell them how they’re doing with the identity issue. They can do one to see how the culture has affected them. How has the culture invaded the way that you see your family or the way that you operate? Do you need to and once they get their results, we suggest things that they can do in order to recover when they’ve been influenced too much by the culture. So there’s a lot of different things that they can do to make that happen. And then we do have our conference 2 things coming up and I’ll just share this quickly. We do a family school of family ministry would be on April 17th and 18th. and i’m going to be teaching 11 cfad frameworks for addressing cultural issues that are impacting the family and we’ll be certifying people to actually teach those courses when they leave and uh so that’s going to be great and then in august the 21st 27th 23rd again we’ll have our annual conference and uh it’s going to be explosive this year because we’re going to send some people away armed and ready to go and take this mission to all over the countries

SPEAKER 03 : 28:04

Well, Apostle Tommy Quick, thank you so much for your time today. We’ve got to land our plane. We’re out of time.

SPEAKER 02 : 28:11

Thank you for having me. It was such a pleasure to meet you. And as I said, I’m serious. You’re one of my heroes. I look for them. And hopefully we can get you to come to our conference as well.

SPEAKER 03 : 28:22

That would be amazing. And to my listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:37

Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.